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Standard Thoughts on Innistrad

About Petr Brozek

Petr Brozek is a Magic player from the Czech Republic who has a number of high-profile finishes under his belt:

65 Lifetime Pro Points

Czech National Champion 2008

Top 8 GP Prague 2011

Top 8 GP Oakland 2010

11th Worlds 2009

22nd Worlds 2008

Level 4 Pro Players Club member

Standard Thoughts on Innistrad

Hello and welcome to today's article in which I’m
going to talk about some Innistrad cards and their Standard applications and
bring you new brews that are trying to make the most out of the Innistrad
mechanics or themes. I will try to adapt those decks to a metagame featuring
some of the old decks that were successful in Block Constructed and those that
survived from the old Standard format – Birthing Pod, Tempered Steel/Puresteel,
MonoR control/midrange, UB control/Tezzeret. First of all, I have to say that I
haven't played a lot with the decks, as Innistrad is
too young right now, but I at least goldfished a lot with all the decks to figure
out the mana curve and so on.

The first strategy I want to talk about is reanimating
creatures from your graveyard. Whenever there is a new reanimation spell
available, people try to build a reanimator deck. I don't think it is possible
to build a real reanimator deck in this format, as the ways to get back
creatures from your graveyard are pretty slow – Unburial Rites, Grimoire of the Dead, Quicksilver Amulet, Skaab Ruinator. The deck then ends up with either
almost no cards to interact with the opponent and is too fragile, or becomes more
of a control deck that isn’t a true reanimator deck, as it will most likely run
reanimation targets that can also be cast from your hand. Instead of focusing
on one of these two approaches, I will try to build a fake reanimator deck – a deck
that is milling/discarding cards in order to get creatures into the graveyard, but it
doesn't care about them as reanimation targets and rather uses them in a different
way.

This deck is also trying to fill the graveyard
with creatures, but it doesn’t care which creatures go to the graveyard. It
just plays creatures that will benefit from other creatures in the graveyard
and it doesn't rely on reanimation spells. This deck resembles the Dredgevine
decks more than anything else. The goal of the deck is to get creatures quickly
into the graveyard and then play several large threats, either directly from
your graveyard or those that benefit from the full grave. As it is important to
get creatures into your graveyard very quickly, there are spells that are capable
of doing so as early as turn one. Among them, Dream Twist and Surge Node look
like the best options. Ghoulcaller's Bell is probably not good enough, as it is
a lot slower than the other options. At two mana, there is Mulch, Merfolk Looter, and Jace's Erasure and at three mana we have Jace's Archivist, Curse of the Blood Tome and Forbidden Alchemy. In order to have enough creatures in your
graveyard, you have to play as many creatures as possible, so you will
prioritize creatures over spells, even if the spells would be a little bit
better. You really don't want to play your mill spells just to mill other mill
spells into your graveyard. The right mix could be somewhere around 28 creatures
and 12 spells.

The core of the deck is formed by the two green
Lhurgoyfs and Skaab Ruinator. The only problem of this trio is that Lhurgoyfs
don't combo well with Skaab Ruinator. But the other cards in the deck combo
well with all of them. The rest of the deck is there to help with casting Skaab Ruinator or make your Lhurgoyfs big enough. This leaves the deck in an awkward
position, as it doesn't interact with the opponent and your threats are just
big and dumb creatures (though two of them have some kind of evasion).

We then have to consider adding cards that can
interact with your opponent’s plays. I don't think there is room for non-creature
cards to do that job and you would have to rely on Aether Adepts and such, if
you really care about the other side of the table. Another question is whether
to include more real threats, such as Stitched Drake, Bonehoard or Wreath of Geists. And finally, we have to decide if playing Visions of Beyond is worth
it. If everything goes according to plan, you could have twenty cards in your
graveyard by turn five or six. This is exactly the point in the game when you
need to refill your hand, but I think it is still better to just start casting Skaab Ruinators over and over again. Ponder could also be an option, as it is very
good with all the mill effects and can improve your draws in the early game,
while also being able to find the important beater in the late game, which is a
similar effect to drawing three cards if you can mill away the other two cards.
But still, there aren’t many slots for non-creature non-mill cards.

A lot of tuning and tweaking will be needed to
find the right mix of cards and hopefully there will be a configuration that
makes the deck competitive against the rest of the field. For example, Kessig Cagebreakers could be pretty strong, as it can kill your opponent with one hit,
but it’s also quite slow.

Another theme of Innistrad is Flashback. The
first card “with flashback” that is on everyone’s mind is Snapcaster Mage. But let’s
forget about Snapcaster Mage for a moment. I am not saying that he is bad,
but he is definitely not a card you can build a Standard deck around. He is a
good addition to existing decks or new decks, but all these decks would most
likely work just fine without him. Then there are some flashback cards that are
good, because of the card advantage they provide (Think Twice, Forbidden Alchemy),
but those are also just additions to an already functioning deck. When I am
talking about using Innistrad themes, I want to turn these themes into the win
condition of my decks.

And with flashback, there is a card that makes
this possible – Burning Vengeance. With Burning Vengeance, you just have to cast
ten cards from your graveyard (if you have one copy on the table) to win the game
and it really doesn't matter what those cards are doing on their own. The only
problem with this is that there are not enough cards with flashback with strong
enough effects and with a reasonable casting cost to make that plan viable.
Fortunately, there is a card that could help - Past in Flames. This is the
other part of the combo, as it allows you to replay any instant or sorcery card
in your graveyard. How easy. Or, how easy it would be in a world with a ton of
rituals and spells like Manamorphose. Unfortunately, there are no (playable)
rituals in Standard, which makes it pretty difficult to play enough cards in
one turn, so there won’t be a fast mana strom deck around. A possible way to go
is to use Phyrexian mana, allowing you to play enough spells from your
graveyard without the need for extra mana. The problem is that, if you want to
deal 20 damage, you have to pay exactly 20 life, if you are lucky enough and
you have 10 Phyrexian mana spells in your graveyard. So this is the only
problem of the plan that needs some more work. Here is a list for reference.

Even if the list above is not working very
well, it lead me to another deck idea. If it’s possible to have 10 instant or
sorcery cards in your graveyard, why not to use this as fuel for Runechanter's Pike? It’s similar to Blazing Shoal, though not as fast, as cheap, as reliable
and... At least it is not banned and is Standard legal! It’s probably more of a Cranial Plating style card than a Shoal, but in one way or another, it fits
pretty well into a deck that plays a lot of spells.

In general, Runechanter's Pike is not as good a
piece of equipment as Swords are, but it could be a lot better in the right
deck. Pike is not in the deck to create a long term advantage like SoFaF does,
but to quickly kill your opponent, ideally in one or two hits. And in order to
make that possible, you need some good bearers for the equipment. The best one
is definitely Inkmoth Nexus. This one alone will enable some one hit kills and
the same is true for Blighted Agent. But the deck is not trying to be as fast
as possible (it’s not possible to get 9 spells in your graveyard quickly enough,
and also have an Agent online) and rather is trying to play a similar game as Splinter Twin did. You counter some spells, search for you combo and protect yourself
with Spellskite and then kill them in one big turn. And, when you are searching for a
combo and trying to get as many instant and sorceries in your graveyard as
possible, you have the perfect home for everyone’s favorite Innistrad superstar
– Snapcaster Mage. In this kind of deck, you can be sure that you will get some
value out the mage almost every time. It will be drawing extra cards most
often, but, being flashable, he can also grab the Pike and hit hard.

The last “mechanic” in Innistrad is
"vampirism" – the ability to get a +1/+1 counter every time a
creature deals damage to an opponent. Even this is not a ridiculous ability, but
it's one that could potentially be pretty strong with one of the older abilities,
proliferate. And it is also a mechanic that could make red decks a real
contender. With those vampires, it seems that red will have to focus more on
synergy rather than just playing the best burn spells and aggressive creatures.
Honestly, the best burn spells and aggressive creatures rotated out with
Zendikar Block anyway. Without Goblin Guide, Lightning Bolt and Searing Blaze
and the presence of Timely Reinforcements, Red will have to think more about
the later stages of the game and about playing threats that can deal more than
three to four damage. Even though there is a pretty nice burn spell in
Innistrad (Brimstone Volley) that would have fit nicely into old burn decks, I
think the better three mana burn spell will be Volt Charge, as Stromkirk Noble
has the potential to become the best red one drop right now. Other cards that
will likely be found alongside Volt Charge in your deck are Stormblood Berserkers, Shrine of Burning Rage and Koth of the Hammer. All those cards are
able to compete with other decks in games that go to the late game.

The question then is if you want to play other
proliferate cards such as a Tezzeret's Gambit, the answer is probably no, as
those cards will make the deck too slow. You also have to figure out if playing
other cards with counters on them, such as a Bloodcrazed Neonate, is worth it.
When analyzing these cards, the criterion has to be if they are good enough without
the proliferate effects, as you can't rely on them so heavily (having 4 of them
in a deck, or 8 at max. if you are playing Tezzeret's Gambit). Right now, I
don't think there are such cards in Innistrad other than Stromkirk Noble.

I am going to post a decklist of a red deck
that will undoubtedly surprise many of you because of the number of Grim Lavamancers. I think that this wizard is not the best red one drop anymore,
without the fetchlands and cheap burn spells. He will find a better home in
some red/blue decks where he will have more fuel. In this deck he is a late
game card that won't do much in the early game and there are probably better
guys for the late game jobs. The other thing is a green splash. I didn’t splash
green just because of Kessig Wolf Run, but because of the reprint of Ancient Grudge. Ancient Grudge is one of the reasons why I think red could stand a
chance against Tempered Steel decks or against Puresteel Paladin decks. And it
also kills Birthing Pod and destroys the new artifact Ivory Mask that every
deck has access to.

I know, I didn’t explore all the new
possibilities of the Innistrad world, but that’s impossible to do in one article.
I tried to talk about topics and ideas that other writers haven't covered yet
(at the time I was writing my article), so hopefully you won't regret reading this
article, even if there are no perfectly tuned decklists.

The Change I would make to the deck are:1- Add Red to Snapcaster Mage, for Grim Lavamancer and other stuff that might help the beat.2- Add Counterspell effect to UG Fake Reanimator Deck, I see it's cool but it's also vulnerable to graveyard stuff, and may be also add some swords.

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